Covert Operations
by Universitas
Summary: From the slums of New York to the wartorn streets of Elysium to the reaches of deep space, fifty sentences exploring the past and present of Commander Victor Shepard. *M!Shep/Joker*


Another unofficial **1character** thing, this time for Victor Shepard. A bit more of Victor's gang past (and pre-gang past) is explored, a bit on his covert ops activities, and his middle name gets revealed.

I do not own _Mass Effect_. EA and BioWare do.

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**Covert Operations**_  
by Universitas / c_saber_

**1. Blend**

There was no blend of emotions as the young man gazed at the baby, just disgust at the thing that killed his girl.

**2. Stain**

Victor, five years old, looked from the purple stain on his shirt to Erin Lawrence with a guilty smile.

**3. Island**

"Victor Patrick Shepard," Erin said, "stop chasing Jake around the island table right now, or both of you will be last in line for breakfast, lunch, _and_ dinner tomorrow."

**4. Apple**

At thirteen, Victor was small enough to snatch an apple from a street vendor unnoticed; of course, the older Reds took it from him to divide among themselves.

**5. Paper**

He spent half an hour examining the torn sheet of paper—a long outdated medium—that had rolled through the Reds' alley; "James Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death," it said across the top.

**6. Relax**

Victor's broken-record whispers were telling both Jake and himself to relax, because it was both their first time.

**7. Leaves**

It was kind of a risk, walking around Central Park, but Victor wanted a change of scenery from the South Bronx, if only for a few minutes.

**8. Proof**

The Old Man favored him for sure, acting on Victor's mere hunches while demanding proof from almost everyone else.

**9. Ugly**

Things were about to get ugly when Fangs showed up at the Reds' main alley with only Victor, Jake, and the Old Man present.

**10. Book**

Victor spent days stealing extranet novels when he figured out hacking with his omni-tool.

**11. Brood**

Tattoo removal was even more painful than getting a tattoo, but Victor wanted to get rid of everything that marked him an ex-gang member; the Alliance was his family now, not the Reds.

**12. Mesh**

Victor had to admit that the Reds—well, the Old Man, really—prepared him for something; most of the omni-tool tricks and techniques in tech training came easily to him.

**13. Soft**

Looking back on it, Victor was a little too soft for gang life.

**14. Shelf**

He couldn't believe it: after all his work, after all the time spent pursuing Saren, the Council and the Alliance were just shelving him.

**15. Alone**

Sometimes Victor took missions solo to go back to the simpler covert ops days.

**16. Fall**

Falling off the roof of a turian military base wasn't the best way to end an infiltration mission, so First Lieutenant Shepard kept that detail out of his report.

**17. Knot**

Victor couldn't get the knot out of his stomach when he learned that the _Normandy_ had been attacked.

**18. Crowd**

Despite his covert ops training, Victor couldn't maneuver through a crowd on Elysium unnoticed for the life of him.

**19. Denial**

He had given up on his love life, so of course he passed off his relationship with Joker as really strong friendship.

**20. Train**

Unending weeks of enduring DI Morne, several days of zero-gravity, countless push-ups, and a grueling hell of a final test later, Victor considered himself a very different person from the kid kicked out of his gang.

**21. Fur**

"Joker, meet razor."

**22. Chrome**

Victor didn't intend on buying anything on the brief stop to the Citadel, but the chrome-trimmed glass holoframe was too tempting—and he had the perfect use for it.

**23. Heart**

Liara saw that Shepard had a knack for cutting to the heart of things, sometimes with an added threat of physical violence.

**24. Intention**

Finch was an idiot to approach him after everything that happened, because Victor entered Chora's Den with every intention of tipping off the guard.

**25. Push**

Shepard pushed himself way too hard, Joker thought as his commander stepped through the airlock to investigate yet another derelict freighter.

**26. Look**

Shepard got back from Asteroid X57 looking really bothered; when Joker found himself wanting to follow him down to the crew deck and pry what was up with him and just _be there_, he figured that his stupid crush had turned into something else.

**27. Weight**

After the beating he took from Saren's reanimated corpse and from Sovereign's own debris, it took most of Victor's strength to keep himself from collapsing under the weight of his armor.

**28. Spider**

He loved it when plans came together: in this case, when mercs came running into a well-prepared death trap full of tech mines.

**29. Robe**

After the Blitz, Elysium was his favorite spot for shore leave—it wasn't every day that an ex-gang member got to bask in glorious celebrity.

**30. Umbrella**

"Acceptable losses" was Victor's umbrella term for mercenaries, criminals, idiots, and overall unsavory types, the kinds of people he had no problem invoking Spectre immunity to kill.

**31. Surface**

It was stupid of Joker to place Victor on this perfect pedestal, because underneath the surface, the man kept a lot of baggage.

**32. Idea**

Adding a tactical cloak to his omni-tool was one of the best ideas Cerberus ever had; he couldn't get enough of sneaking behind an enemy before filling its head with SMG rounds.

**33. Diamond**

He left the jewelry store thinking that now wasn't the time for that kind of thing.

**34. Blind**

The Council, Anderson, Udina, Kaidan…. Victor spent the night after Horizon wondering how they became so damn blind.

**35. Flow**

Victor preferred planning and preparedness to spontaneity, but with Joker, he liked going with the flow and seeing what the pilot came up with.

**36. Movement**

In the corner of her eye, Miranda saw Shepard vanish from one side of the battlefield and reappear behind the enemy line.

**37. More**

Just before the _Snake Fang_ assignment, Victor swore off casual sex for life; it wasn't the same without that connection, that intimacy of a relationship.

**38. Honey**

Joker eyed the silver bracelet Victor gave him, looked back up at the man, grinned, and said "Don't tell me we're gonna start calling each other 'honey' now" before slipping it on.

**39. Weather**

Pragia's unceasing storm brought Victor back to the night he got shot by the Fangs... and rescued by O'Connor; he needed to get Jack's business done with as soon as possible.

**40. Blue**

He sometimes wondered if he would start seeing blue text and symbols even without his combat visor.

**41. Double**

Garrus was right: Victor had a history of double standards and hypocrisy.

**42. Braid**

"Next you'll be offering to braid my hair," Joker said when Victor approached him with an armful of clothing for him to try on.

**43. Thread**

His injuries from the Blitz were far worse than he thought; the doc told him he was just barely alive when the _Paris_ took him aboard.

**44. Angles**

By the time the mercs knew what was going on, Victor had Thane, Kasumi, and himself attacking them from all sides.

**45. Daydream**

Sometimes, when the _Normandy_ was in the middle of FTL flight and he had finished his status check on the crew, Victor wondered what he would be doing if he wasn't the big hero.

**46. Nightmare**

He wondered how much he drank after waking up from a "nightmare" involving Reaper calamari, Miranda with a bad ponytail and a purple rag, Wrex underneath Tali's mask, and a banana-headed Garrus.

**47. Honor**

Victor and Joker made it a point to share Armali Flame on every anniversary of Virmire.

**48. Palm**

Whether it was sabotaging enemy weapons, tech, or biotics, hacking through security systems, or firing scorching plasma rounds, Victor held a lot of power in his right palm.

**49. Screen**

He found it amusing, the various out-of-the-ass "technologies" playing out on the screen: "warp drives," "hyperdrives," ion cannons…"

**50. Warmth**

Despite the Cerberus logos dotting every corridor, the _Normandy_ had this warm, homey feeling that Scipio freighters and frigates lacked.

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Aaand that's all for now, at least with Victor Patrick Shepard's adventures in 1-sentence prompt-based challenges. Hm hm. _Victor Patrick Shepard_. Not something he'd willingly tell Joker.

And yes, he's a southpaw, as "Palm" suggested. So in my head-canon, all of Victor's equipment is swapped to the other side, and his visor goes on his left eye.


End file.
